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Gallup

Poll: For first time, majority says government shouldn’t favor any set of values

Gallup has asked about the government’s role in morality since 1993. The percentage favoring government promotion of traditional values has been as high as 59%, in early 1996 and in 2001, after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Support for the traditional values position fell to 50% in 2005, and though it has exceeded 50% twice since then — in 2009 and 2010 — the 2005 poll seems to have signaled the beginning of a new era in Americans’ views on the matter. The shift at that time may have been prompted in part by the unpopularity of the Bush administration and Republican Congress, but has continued as Americans have become more permissive in their attitudes on certain social issues such as gay rights and marijuana use.

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I’m all for it. Just don’t push against values either, and there’s the rub. So, if I have to choose between Govt pushing my values which I beleive to be good, or the values of gay mariage and abortion which I beleive to be bad, I’ll choose mine.

This is misleading. Majority say this because it’s perfectly clear that bureaucrats are going to shove liberal “values” down our throats whether we want it or not. There’s no sense pushing for the government to promote traditional values when 90% of those in Washington think things like “Gay marriage” are traditional values.

My God, people are stupid. “It is wrong for people to kill other people.” That’s a value, you morons! You are valuing life, and saying that because you value it the laws should protect it. Why is America so ridiculously bent on destroying itself?

I guess the government could refuse to push the value of having an orderly society, responsible government, or even a government that cares what its citizens think.

Axeman on October 10, 2012 at 8:49 PM

That’s not so much a value as it is the role of government. I’m pretty sure what people are talking about are liberal values — green energy, hating oil, statist ideals, as well as “conservative values” — defining something like marriage, pushing creationism in science class rooms…

We should let the federal government do its constitutionally limited duties, let the states do theirs, and let families and communities worry about values.

Nope. It’s raaaaacist to have American values. Last year there was an article here about a California public school that had forbidden its kids from wearing American flag t-shirts, because it might offend all the illegal aliens in the schools. Can you imagine the outrage if these same schools prohibited the display of the Mexican flag in their schools?

We say, for example, that children shouldn’t go hungry. So we have laws that provide assistance. Or that you cannot own another person. So we banned slavery. Et cetera, et cetera.

The examples are endless.

SteveMG on October 10, 2012 at 8:57 PM

That’s not how laws (especially federal) work. Law should be based on government defending peoples natural (or god-given if you prefer) rights. As in, you can’t own a slave because you’re infringing on his right to liberty.

However, no one has the right to force a farmer to farm food, a trucker to deliver it, a grocery story to give it away to someone… So thus “free food” is most decidedly not a right.

If it weren’t for values there would have been no Declaration of Independence and all those battles to topple an overreaching regime.

Why is so much of America stocking up on guns and ammunition? To protect Constitutional values if necessary from the trend of a vain Supreme Court increasingly indifferent to their oath or the peons people, a Congress increasingly indifferent to Liberty and its own laws, a president increasingly indifferent to self-determination and national sovereignty.

We should let the federal government do its constitutionally limited duties, let the states do theirs, and let families and communities worry about values.

Timin203 on October 10, 2012 at 8:54 PM

Remember that enough people have been confused by the Incorporation Principle that they are not exactly federalists, and it’s not clear that they make a distinction between federal and local governments. So, unless the poll said federal government, they could as well be talking about any level of government.

So how does a “community” decide stuff? How do they act as a coherent entity?

That two consenting adults shouldn’t have sex on your front lawn in front of children on the way to school is one of the values I’d like to retain. However, if the government feels qualms on acting on the druthers of the community based on their moral values, then welcome to that brave new world, where the only values government pushes is the libertarian nihilism that all value systems are equally valid.

This is where clinical equality becomes nihilism. One lady likes to plant roses on her front yard, one guy likes to shag his wife on his. They are both activities enjoyed by the home owner on their own property, how can we say a yard can be used for one and not another, with this successively vapid and moronic idea of treating everything equally so that we treat everyone who identifies themselves by their behavior equally?

Frankly, you have to correct a lot of conflation of ideas before you can sort this stuff out. Asking people what they think about topics they don’t understand so that they can score points by popular misconceptions doesn’t do any good. Not that the government should be involved in doing what somebody considers good.